Forums > Game Forums > Wasteland > Wasteland 2?
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 3/13/2012 11:05 PM · Permalink · Report
On day 1, they're already a third of the way there.
Who knows, if it's a hit, maybe EA will make a sequel to Fountain of Dreams 8)
BurningStickMan (17916) on 3/14/2012 2:05 AM · Permalink · Report
I'm only buying if all the story and dialogue come on a separate printed manual you must reference each time.
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 3/14/2012 6:55 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
End of day 1 and they're halfway! Who knows, maybe if they exceed their goal enough, they'll release Meanwhile also 8) (corrected: "Meantime")
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 3/14/2012 3:20 PM · Permalink · Report
Two-thirds the following morning!
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 3/14/2012 3:24 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
It's curious how Meantime was described as being very Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure-esque, then they canned it, and THEN EA used the Wasteland engine to make Richard & Alan's Escape from Hell. (... which was quite Bill & Ted's-esque)
Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 3/15/2012 3:39 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
aaaand.... it's funded.
Lain Crowley (6629) on 3/15/2012 11:13 PM · Permalink · Report
Hardly. Both of these games have been funded because of their creator's celebrity. Name one person who became well known in the past decade as a celebrity designer. I can only name one, Ken Levine, and he seems to like the publisher system just fine.
Slug Camargo (583) on 3/16/2012 5:08 AM · Permalink · Report
The fact that they are fairly known within certain circles undoubtedly helped in getting that much money in such short time, but to pin the success of these projects exclusively in said fame is very short sighted from you. The main point here is that these are people that pitched well-rounded, nicely presented ideas that haven't been explored in mainstream gaming for ages. And I'm pretty sure that the fact they're being outspoken, straight shooters (i.e.: no PR bullshit between them and their public) also played a major part.
This is actually not that different from the Xenonauts situation, and those guys are hardly any sort of celebrities.
So yes, I kind of side with Parf in this one: While I do think the publisher-centered, heavy-marketing model isn't going anywhere anytime soon, I also think this is a clear indicator that there are (a lot of) people out there who are demanding a different kind of games, and who are even willing to shape up a completely different form of gaming world with the power of their wallets.
This is another step down the path that started with the insane success of the likes of Amnesia and Minecraft, and the whole thing is nothing short of a revolution in this subculture of ours.
Parf (7873) on 3/16/2012 11:51 AM · Permalink · Report
I suppose in a way this "new" way of doing things is somewhat comparable to what has happened within the music industry. It seems to me, while the big labels still are doing just fine, that there is a whole ocean of bands and artists who are doing amazingly on their own. All they need is the internet and actual talent. As opposed to manufactured talent and heavy marketing I mean.
This has also lead to a lot of "different" stuff getting more widespread, and bands who would get totally shot down if they auditioned in front of a label CEO, now are able to find a pretty sizable amount of fans without the (greedy) middle man.
And yes, while I understand that my examples in my previous post were that of "celebrities" of sorts, I still think (like Dr Katze said) that if there is this much room for nonames like Mojang to just make a briefcase of money over night, then there is hope still.
I can sense a new divide in the gaming market brewing as a result... the CoD and casual Wii players on one side, and people with a genuine interest in the arts and crafts of original games on the other.
Lain Crowley (6629) on 3/16/2012 3:54 PM · Permalink · Report
Xenonauts is still piggybacking off the popularity of major retail releases by major publishing studios, no matter how old they originally were. Small independant releases can exploit demographics, but it takes major publishing companies with wide releases for people to even realise they belong to these demographics in the first place.
Slug Camargo (583) on 3/17/2012 5:10 PM · Permalink · Report
And how do you explain the success of Amnesia, Minecraft or Q.U.B.E.? And what about Dear Esther? There are endless discussions about whether or not it's even a proper game at all, and yet it sold like insane in a couple days. And the closest these last two had to a publisher is an indie fund that just gave them the money and told them to go ahead and do whatever they would do.
I tell you, there are lots of people out there willing to reshape the industry as we know it. And it is happening right now. HAVE SOME FAITH MAN! :P
Lain Crowley (6629) on 3/18/2012 12:32 AM · Permalink · Report
Minecraft managed to hit an untapped vein. Just like Angry Birds did, just like Bejeweled did, just like The Sims did. Also, because of the nature of the game, Notch was able to create a vertical slice at alpha stage and begin selling a product long before it was even close to finished. Very few games can be designed like that, and if Notch hadn't been able to make that vertical slice it would not have caught on like it had and he might not have even been able to get enough funding to finish it.
Actually another game using the vertical slice method is Hawken. That might be a good method for indie games, but it is limiting in the variety that can use it.
Amnesia is a solid game which became a mimetic fad. And while I'm not very well versed on my history with the company, didn't they already have financial success with the Penumbra games, and used that money in order to self-publish Amnesia? Penumbra, too, was popular because a) physics were still novel then, and b) it was first released as a free tech demo.
Dear Esther is a vaguely interesting student project and the fact that they got away with charging $10 for a prettier version of it only goes to show how starved for diversity the industry is.
...wait dear esther sold 50k copies? Man, what the fuck?
In these examples all I see are extraordinary cases with wildly different circumstances. I do not see a trend. Digital delivery can facilitate this kind of secondary industry, but someone still has to pony up the cash, up front, for games to be made.
Slug Camargo (583) on 3/18/2012 2:38 AM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start Lain Crowley wrote--] In these examples all I see are extraordinary cases with wildly different circumstances. I do not see a trend. Digital delivery can facilitate this kind of secondary industry, but someone still has to pony up the cash, up front, for games to be made. [/Q --end Lain Crowley wrote--] Of course, but there's a huge difference on who ponies up the cash. Like in the example of the Indie Fund: They're basically financing projects out of blind faith, and they won't meddle in the developers' business unless it's for giving financial advice --and even then the developers are free to take the advice or not. Granted, "blind faith" is an exaggeration, in fact they do have a screening process, and it's so careful and severe that they currently have more money than games to fund; but the point remains: They're giving the developers the kind of freedom that no publisher would give, and that is huge.
And there are plenty of other player-funded projects like Xenonauts out there (don't make look for the links, I'm interrupting a very important ME3 multiplaya here and I'm on the clock :P ). Some of them are so successful, in fact, that they found themselves in trouble with the likes of PayPal, who basically will believe that an indie game developer getting a ton of donations overnight must be laundering money or something.
As for not being a trend, I give you that these cases are surrounded by different enough circumstances; but then there are also a bunch of rather important similarities, the main one being the fact that all these games have been released in the last couple years. That's where I see the beginning of a trend.
Lain Crowley (6629) on 3/15/2012 7:27 PM · Permalink · Report
Now we only have to wait 18 months to actually play it.
(still considering putting in $50 for that tasty cloth map)
